Despicable way to treat Glasgow parents

It's been a bit of a week for parents in Glasgow. On Tuesday many of them received letters telling them their child's school or nursery is facing closure. The statutory (or it wouldn't be happening at all I'm quite sure) consultation begins in February and will last for 6 weeks but all the indications are that the Labour council have made their decision. SNP councillors tried to push through an amendment at the executive meeting but of course were outnumbered.

It may well be true that some schools have to merge or indeed close but this whole thing stinks for a number of reasons. First, they should have been working with the parents before the "consultation" rather than springing it on them once they've more or less made their decision. Secondly, can we take this as an indication that they've no intentions of reducing class sizes for p1-3 if they're pressing ahead with closures? After all we'll need more capacity in the schools once that SNP policy is implemented. And finally, when SNP Renfrewshire Council proposed to close ONE school because it was only A THIRD FULL, the Labour Party were up in arms. And yet, their argument for closing some of the 25 in Glasgow is that some of them are only HALF full. Hypocrites.

However the important thing here is that we put as much pressure on the Labour Council as possible to face facts, they can't run a full and proper consultation on 25 different schools and nurseries in 6 weeks. They should scrap this ridiculous plan and sit down with parents to talk about the options. The parents clearly care about their schools because there have been bulging public meetings across the city all week as well as the mass demo outside the City Chambers on Friday. The photo shows Bob Doris SNP MSP talking to some of those protestors. I work for Bob and he's going to do all he can to support the parents so I'll be able to keep you updated.